Review: Ryan Landry's 'M' is as much about him as about Fritz Lang's film

The title of the current Huntington Theatre production at the Calderwood Pavilion is "Ryan Landry’s ‘M.’" That’s important. Not simply "M," which would reference its inspiration, the Fritz Lang film. Because "Ryan Landry’s ‘M’" is as much about playwright Ryan Landry as it is about "M."

By Keith Powers/CORRESPONDENT

MetroWest Daily News, Framingham, MA

By Keith Powers/CORRESPONDENT

Posted Apr. 15, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Apr 15, 2013 at 3:21 PM

By Keith Powers/CORRESPONDENT

Posted Apr. 15, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Apr 15, 2013 at 3:21 PM

BOSTON

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The title of the current Huntington Theatre production at the Calderwood Pavilion is "Ryan Landry’s ‘M.’" That’s important. Not simply "M," which would reference its inspiration, the Fritz Lang film. Because "Ryan Landry’s ‘M’" is as much about playwright Ryan Landry as it is about "M."

And not the work of Ryan Landry, although knowledge of his drag send-ups like "Peter Pansy" or "Joan of Arkansas," which have been staged for years in Boston and Provincetown by the Gold Dust Orphans, might help with some of the inside jokes. "Ryan Landry’s ‘M’" is as much about the idea of being Ryan Landry as it is about his work, or Fritz Lang’s.

The play continually references Lang’s film, and takes its visual inspiration from the 1931 black-and-white thriller. Tragic shadows onstage dominate a chiaroscuro cityscape. When the characters inhabit the world of Lang, they wear drab monotones and act in dramatic, long distance spotlights. But "Ryan Landry’s ‘M’" busts out of Lang’s mid-century Europe, leaving its references and even its dramatic thrust far behind.

A typed out description displayed on the curtain warns everyone at the outset: This is a "dramedy," drama melded with comedy. And that it is, but for most of the night, the play is either one or the other, like parallel universes both visible to the audience but not to the players.

Lang’s film, Peter Lorre’s first vehicle as a screen heavy, tells the story of a serial child murderer (branded eventually with "M" for "Mörder"), his pursuit and capture, and the mob justice that ensures. The film, Lang’s first talkie, revels in subtle clues - store-front reflections, whistled tunes, handwriting samples, all of which "Ryan Landry’s ‘M’" references.

But "Ryan Landry’s ‘M’" isn’t about child safety, although an "Intermission" monologue about stolen childhood either updates Lang’s underlying premise that mothers should protect their children, or comes as a compete non sequitur. From the first, characters change personas right before your eyes, or appear magically out of the audience, defying the "story" and injecting a alternate narrative, a half-hearted romantic comedy, into the mix.

It makes little sense to anyone for a long time, although the laughs - mostly ribald one liners - keep on coming. The inside-out stage world finally focuses when the murderer, a shadowy silhouette patrolling the edges of the action, reveals himself as the playwright. And he’s been rewriting the story as it unfolds, first to avoid detection, then to avoid death at the hands of the mob (his characters).

At the climax, "M" (Karen MacDonald, brilliantly co-opting Lorre’s appearance and mysterious persona) pleads to be put out of his misery, which seems to be a kind of relentless delirium that produces characters that can’t be remembered or controlled. But the characters also realize that killing the author means killing themselves.

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The acting is uniformly superb. Ellen Adair, Paul Melendy, Larry Coen, David Drake, Laura Latreille and Samantha Richert all play in both worlds, comedy and drama, each shifting through multiple roles with ease. Director Caitlin Lowans’ insightful pacing -especially when it comes to stepping over the fourth wall and introducing characters from the audience - keeps the show moving, even when the dialogue slows.

The principal shortcoming in "Ryan Landry’s ‘M’" is that one story - the playwright’s loving appreciation of a seminal film - never blends into the other - a misdirected romance between two characters who can’t remain the characters they start out to be. The two narratives move along discretely, and when Ryan Landry (oops, "M") gives the long, climactic monologue pleading for an end to his creative misery, everyone anticipates a joke.

A joke that never comes. Because it’s drama. No wait, it’s comedy. So confusing.